One's Not Supposed To Be Comfortable

“⁶We do use wisdom when speaking to people who are mature in their faith. But it isn't the wisdom of this world or of its rulers, who will soon disappear. ⁷We speak of God's hidden and mysterious wisdom that God decided to use for our glory long before the world began. ⁸The rulers of this world didn't know anything about this wisdom. If they had known about it, they would not have nailed the glorious Lord to a cross. ⁹But it is just as the Scriptures say,

"What God has planned

for people who love him

is more than eyes have seen

or ears have heard.

It has never even

entered our minds!"

¹⁰God's Spirit has shown you everything. His Spirit finds out everything, even what is deep in the mind of God. – 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 (CEV)

I was thinking to myself, “What makes this inmate and others like her, expect to have a comfortable stay in the prison?”

The unit deputy sent her for complaint of slight bleeding. She was 7 months pregnant. I turned the knob that opened the metal door to let her in from the Female side of the Infirmary. I motioned for her to go through another heavy door and as she sat on one of the blue chairs, I started my assessment.

“It’s just not comfortable in my cell, Ma’am…And the dinner was not even enough. It was only spaghetti.”

“My concern in seeing you was regarding your complaint about having bleeding,” my response trying to shorten the unnecessary whining.

“I just don’t understand…Why am I alone in my cell?”

I didn’t have a chance to check on her charge prior to seeing her which I usually did when I had to do sick calls. It helped me better understand their situations and surely were beneficial when it came to assessing their true needs, be it medical or mental problem issues.

I finished what I needed to do as she continued whining how food in the jail was disappointing  and that she was housed all alone in a tiny cell. Seeing that she didn’t require treatment for her initial complaint, I let her in back to the waiting room. As I gave her a cup of water to motivate her to increase her fluid intake, I took a quick peek in the monitor and found out that she was arrested for child endangerment/cruelty.

I went up to the thick, glass partition window while giving back her yellow pass to her hand so she could return to her unit. She gave me a look, a puzzled kind of stare why I was not sending her to the hospital.

“Ma’am, you’re not bleeding. And you denied that you were having any kinds of pains. It’s not comfortable here in the Infirmary either and I had no reason to keep you here.”

She was quiet, accepting the truth in everything I said. As she was getting ready to turn her back away from me, I whispered audibly enough for her to hear:

“By the way, it’s not supposed to be comfortable in the jail. But even then, we must be grateful that foods are being served here than nothing. Few minutes from now, you are about to get your evening snack because you’re pregnant. Also, you’re all alone in your cell because that’s for your own protection. You can be a potential target by others who might not like the reason why you’re here in the first place…”

“Please do put a sick call slip whenever you’re feeling that something is not right. Or you can just let your deputies know like what you did earlier. We are always here to see you if you have a true emergency or problems.”

Photo Credit

“Thank you, Ma’am,” she walked away, dragging her prison-issued rubber tan slippers as she re-traced her steps back to her small cell. A place of isolation but was also a temporary place of refuge from other predators.

Life in earth is temporary. We are not to be comfortable because this is not our true home. Our hearts will always be unsatisfied with the things of this world. We have that longing, a longing that helps us search for the true Home.

“Jesus answered, "My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world."

- John 18:36 (NLT)